Trump Knows How To Be A Hardass-- Although Not With Fascist Dictators

Though some White House imbecile told Trump that the Canadians burned down the White House, economically and strategically there is no country more important to the U.S. than Canada, nor closer to the U.S. in every conceivable way. Tuesday Toronto's biggest newspaper reported that the circus performer Putin saddled the U.S. with as "president" said in Singapore after his meeting with the savage and bloodthirsty North Korean dictator that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s assertion that Canada "will not be pushed around" will end up costing Canadians "a lot of money." And as always, money was very much of Señor Trumpanzee's mind-- money for himself. He referred to Trudeau, as "dishonest" and "weak." (If ever there was a case of projectionism!!!)

Trump can play hardball with our friends in Canada-- but not with the North Korean fascist. The NY Times reported that "People briefed on the meetings said American negotiators had found it difficult to make significant headway with the North Koreans, in part because the White House did not back them up in taking a hard line."

As for Korea... "They have great beaches. You see that whenever they're exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said boy look at the view. Wouldn't that make a great condo?" He told the press gaggle you could have the "best hotels in the world" on the beaches that North Korea uses for its artillery drills. He's talking about this guy:

Trump is more ignorant than an average junior high school student. Boldly not preparing for the summit was bizarre enough. It led to this:

And worse. But, of course, not for indispensible men Trump and Kim. Both authoritarian-minded lunatics wanted a summit, with all its spectacle that allowed them to revel in the spotlight and ameliorate choppy political waters back home. Trump was willing to give up a lot, announcing without consulting South Korea that the U.S. would be ending "war games" (AKA, Joint Military exercises) between the U.S. and South Korea. (Nor did Trump tell the Pentagon he was going to do this.)

We'll never know what the 2 dictators, as Fox put it, really said because there is no record, Trumpanzee, drug-addled and prematurely senile, claiming he has "one of the great memories of all times." Christina Wilkie tweeted that "By allowing only their interpreters, Trump and Kim left no one who could verify what they agreed to in the meeting. Policy experts agree, this is probably bad for the world. But for Trump and Kim, who both built empires on fictional narratives, it’s just fine. In fact, it’s ideal."

The NY Times reported that Señor T said that denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula would begin "very quickly," defining neither "denuclearization" nor "very quickly." In a joint statement, Trumpanzee "committed to provide security guarantees" to North Korea, and Kim "reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," which is hardly new and is only an agree to "work towards," an intention. Everyone except the moron fake president knows this has happened before. Will it-- the top priority-- get Trump a Nobel?

The wording of the document signed by Trump and Kim Jong-un on Tuesday falls some way short of the dramatic billing the president gave it at the end of the leaders’ historic summit in Singapore.

Trump described it as a “very comprehensive” agreement that would “take care of a very big and very dangerous problem for the world.”

...There is no direct commitment here to formalise those sentiments with a peace treaty to replace the armistice signed at the end of the Korean war in 1953. That would require the involvement of China and other countries that took part in the conflict. As expected, Trump offered “unspecified” security guarantees to North Korea, a gesture whose vagueness matches that of Kim’s commitment to denuclearise.

Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

This is the most critical, and easily the most problematic, of the leaders’ statements. It does not meet Washington’s long-stated goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement (CVID) of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, but simply restates Kim’s position after his summit with Moon.

No serious analysts expected the North Korean leader to commit to CVID in his first meeting with Trump. That process-- if it happens at all-- could take years and cost billions of dollars.

It also fails to define what is meant by denuclearisation. In Washington, it requires Kim to abandon his nuclear ambitions. But the North Korean interpretation is more complicated. The regime believes it should include the withdrawal of the US nuclear umbrella from South Korea, possibly including the withdrawal of all 28,500 US troops ranged along the South’s border with the North.

As the Atlantic Council’s Alexander Vershbow said, it comes down to the difference between the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and the denuclearisation of North Korea.

In an interview, Trump, undoubtably the stupidest and most ignorant person to ever occupy the White House, said to George Stephanopoulos, "I do trust him." And who exactly is "dishonest and weak?" Should Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill have given in to Hitler and Tojo? Ask yourself that... because Kim is more brutal and bloodthirsty than either of them. Yesterday both Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were out front advocating their support for Trump's appeasement-- in a very big way. Your crackpot fake "president": "Honestly, I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong, I mean I may stand before you in six months and say, hey, I was wrong-- I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse." Trump, incoherent and delusional, as usual, publicly lavished praise on Kim, calling him a "very talented man" who "loves his country very much... A worthy negotiator...a very worthy, very smart negotiator. We had a terrific day and we learned a lot about each other and our countries... I think our whole relationship with North Korea and the Korean peninsula is going to be a very different situation than it has in the past,.. "We’ve developed a very special bond."

Few members of Congress on either side of the aisle, have been as forthright about this bogus "deal" as Elizabeth Warren has. This was her statement Tuesday: "Yesterday's photo op doesn't change the fact that a nuclear-armed North Korea is a threat to the security of the United States, our allies, and the world. Generations of North Korean leaders have made and broken promises before-- this Administration's success will be judged on whether it can eliminate Kim's nuclear weapons and verify they are gone. We're at the beginning of a diplomatic process that will require patience, experience, and close coordination with our allies. I want to see the President succeed, but a handshake is no substitute for a binding, verifiable deal."

Oh, I found a Republican who feels just as strongly as Warren-- Meghan McCain, who said, also on Tuesday, "This is a totalitarian communist dictator in the same vein as Hitler-- murder, enslavement, imprisonment, sexual violence, starvation, forced abortions, political, racial, religious persecution... [Kim’s regime] is completely and utterly the closest thing to Hitler’s Germany that exists in modern time. My problem was how far it went with the buddy-buddy, and there was no talk whatsoever of the human rights violations going on in that country."

Are McCain And Palin Really Leaving The Republican Party?

Well, the McCain I'm referring to is Meghan and the GOP left her; she just doesn't know it. Palin isn't Todd-- who was never really a Republican anyway, just an anti-American secessionist slob and a member of the Alaska Independence Party-- but Sarah, who claims she's willing to campaign for anyone, regardless of political party, reactionary enough to support the failed policy agenda that makes up her narrow world view. Let's look at her first since Huckabee, her main rival for the yahoo vote that make up so much of the base of the GOP left behinds, was mouthing off about her yesterday. Huck was on GOP-TV pushing the self-serving meme that Palin is going to become an independent, clearly intending to smear her with his fake southern fried concern.

"I hope she remains-- let me be real clear-- a part of the Republican Party," Huckabee told FOX News. "I'm a little concerned when I hear her say that she may sort of branch out and go third party or go independent. That would be a big mistake because we need to rebuild the Republican Party, not abandon it."

Just as a new poll starts circulating that shows only a third, or a little less than a third of Republicans think Palin is qualified to be president-- far more than Democrats or independents-- Huckabee is trying to drive silver spike into the heart of her presidential aspirations, a move that would benefit Willard Romney, whose VP nominee Huckabee is hoping to be.

As for McCain's sometimes befuddled-sounding daughter Meghan... she's become something of a bête noir to the self righteous dullards of the right-wing blogosphere who pounce on her every statement as proof that John McCain should never have been nominated to run for president. Today they're mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore because she called Joe the Plumber a dumbass and said she loves gay men. Her rabidly fascist cousin Stacy takes the opportunity to go on a vicious homophobic diatribe-- click the link above-- insulting her every which way imaginable and proving for anyone who cares to give his hateful blatherings a second look that he fears and detests women, particularly women who disagree with his extremist and primitivist way of responding to the world.

So what brought on this week's hysterical outpouring of loathing from the far right for poor Meghan? James Kirchick's rambling interview with McCain in the new issue of Out.

“Does it sound campy to say I love gay men?” asks Meghan McCain, sipping an iced tea at the nouveau-chic Hotel Palomar in Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Circle. Campy or not, the lovesick McCain has been ubiquitous this year, sallying forth on late-night TV-- Larry King Live, The Colbert Report, The Rachel Maddow Show-- to scold the Republican establishment for its social conservatism and stump for gay marriage. “If two people fall in love, they should have the option to get married just like I can,” she told Stephen Colbert, pointing out the inherent hypocrisy of a party that believes in keeping government out of people’s private lives-- except when those people are gay men and women.

...Like her father, Meghan McCain isn’t shy-- a fact she’s quick to point out. “I think I’m a lot like my dad,” she says. “We’re the same person.” Most noticeably, both McCains have a preternatural ability to piss off their fellow Republicans, an asset they wear on their sleeves. Within weeks of starting a regular column for The Daily Beast, McCain flexed her newfound muscle by attacking the GOP’s queen of mean, Ann Coulter-- “watching her is sometimes like watching a train wreck,” she wrote-- and dissing fellow GOP Twitterer Karl Rove, whom she branded a “Twitter Creep.” Easy targets perhaps, but it was a smart way to position herself on the opposite side of the aisle. “I’d be flattered to be considered the anti–Ann Coulter, the anti–Rush Limbaugh,” she says.

...“Homophobia is the last socially accepted prejudice,” McCain says, repeating it for emphasis. So it’s only natural that she also views the fight for gay equality as “my generation’s civil rights movement.” At a time when California can constitutionally ban gay marriage and the current presidential administration-- having vowed so much-- has yet to fulfill its promises, it’s hard not to be won over by this bubbly optimist. “In general, I don’t get a good response from the conservative movement,” she admits, unfazed. “But there are a lot of people who have said, ‘I’m Republican and I’m pro–gay marriage. Thank you for showing that you don’t have to be anti–gay marriage to be a Republican.’”

To drooling misogynist Stacy McCain and his fellow hate-filled neanderthals this makes her a desperate and pathetic "fag hag" and a "fish." 


Proof Positive That Meghan McCain Is Every Bit A Republican At Heart

Two punks

I guess Republican propagandist Leigh Scott's brilliant marketing strategy-- to re-brand the GOP as the punk rock party-- didn't get the thumbs up from the decidedly non-punk rock figures who run it, namely Cheney/Limbaugh '12. How do I know? The extremist Townhall blog, a major tow-er of the party line, was making fun of Meghan McCain-- public enemy #1 to the GOP fringe-- for her very Republican behavior at Sunday's Correspondent's Dinner by calling attention to her affinity with... punk rock, once again relegating the GOP to the anti-punk rock party. Like someone was taken in by that meme for two minutes??

The New York Daily News actually broke the story about how Meghan turned into a bratty, spoiled Valley Girl when her two super hard to get tickets for the dinner wouldn't get three people into the overbooked festivities. "Does he even know who the fuck I am?" she demanded of the security guard who went over to explain that everyone is supposed to play by the rules now, regardless of how rich they are or who their father almost was. She made such a stink that they eventually just let her in. In case you missed it last time:

Republicans Go All Out To Wreck Americans' Good Will Towards Obama With Another Smear Campaign

An inflammatory screed by the extreme right Wall Street Journal editorial board warned yesterday that Obama killed "any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington" on April 21-- "mark down the date," they insist rather dramatically-- when he "injected a poison into our politics" by not stopping an investigation into war crimes and torture by the higher-ups of the Bush Regime. Dan Balz and Perry Bacon examined the problem more dispassionately in the Washington Post.

Obama injected poison? Where have these guys been-- with their heads up their asses? The entire obstructionist GOP has mounted a major coordinated campaign against Obama on every front. They have a putz like Paul Ryan (R-WI) out on TV whining that Obama isn't being bipartisan enough while Long Island Congressman Peter King threatening to shut down the Congress and "go to war" if the Justice Department finds any lawbreakers in the Bush Regime committed crimes that have to be prosecuted and the clownish Michael Steele is castigated by the radical right members of the RNC for not calling Obama inflammatory names often enough! And what about the Missouri's pathetic old Kit Bond dragging himself out in front of the TV cameras to let the whole country know that though he's retiring he has no intention of going out with an ounce of grace and he's certainly not done spreading his toxins. His reason for running to the media with the Limbaugh/Gingrich/Cheney talking points: "Our terror fighters need to know whether their president has their back or will stab them in the back." What a shitead! He claims Obama released the torture memos as a partisan stunt. Watch the video of the moribund and morally bankrupt Bond on MSNBC. This from the party that has decided its future rests with branding Obama and the Democrats as "socialists." An e-mail from one of the clowns to all 168 voting members of the RNC accused Obama of restructuring the country along socialist ideals:

“The proposed resolution acknowledges that and calls upon the Democrats to be truthful and honest with the American people by renaming themselves the Democrat Socialist Party,” wrote Bopp, the Republican committeeman from Indiana. “Just as President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ galvanized opposition to communism, we hope that the accurate depiction of the Democrats as a Socialist Party will galvanize opposition to their march to socialism.”

They even had the gall to wheel out the disgraced old hack Porter Goss who Bush was forced to fire as CIA director after just a few months when he was implicated in a series of corruption scandals mixing bribery, prostitutes, domestic politics, lobbyists, sleazy Republican politicians like Duke Cunningham. Goss, who's been keeping on the down low and hoping everyone would forget what a failure he was, jumped oon board the Limbaugh-Cheney crazy train yesterday, insisting Obama was "crossing a red line." (Legitimate intelligence officials contradict Goss' and Cheney's partisan ravings and "the CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any 'specific imminent attacks,' according to recently declassified Justice Department memos." And then there's Philip Zelikow, the former State Department counselor whose efforts, in writing, to warn the Bush Regime that their torture activities could land them all in prison were met by attempts to have all his reports confiscated and destroyed.)

And you might not be surprise by Juan's rant on torture, but what about Meghan McCain's explosion yesterday? She was bemoaning the fact that Cheney and Rove are still trying to be seen as the face of the Republican Party. She's creeped out by their very unpatriotic and endlessly repeated attacks on Obama and said it is "very unprecedented for someone like Karl Rove or Dick Cheney to be criticizing the President." Her advice to them: "Go away."

The results of new polling from the very anti-Obama Associated Press and from Pew show the desperate political hacks who would rather see our country fail than watch Obama succeed have a long road ahead of them if they think they're going to bring the country over to the Dark Side with them. "When Americans are asked to assess television news coverage of Barack Obama, Fox News Channel stands out from other networks for being too critical of the president." Americans like and trust the president and they dislike the harsh, negative rhetoric from Fox and the Republicans.

Instead of paying any heed to the plotting and conniving sore losers and lockstep obstructionists, listen to what an actual distinguished ex-CIA agent has to say about this whole shit-storm the Republicans are raising:




ONE SMALL WORRIED FOOTNOTE FROM KEN

I say, hear, hear! Thank goodness somebody said it!

I just have this one small, or maybe not so small, lingering reservation, or maybe worry, carried over from the presidential campaign: When an entire political movement/party (whatever you want to call what's left of the hybrid of Modern Republicanism and Movement Conservatism) goes over to the dark side, rejecting any obligation to reality or truth and instead unleashing -- in massed chorus, at top hysterical volume, with endless repetition and without interruption -- a barrage of nothing but lies and insanity, to which, as I've tried to point out a couple of times, THERE IS NO POSSIBLE RATIONAL RESPONSE (you simply can't counter insanity with sanity, and webs of outright lies similarly take on a life of their own, beyond the reach of any possible correction), a certain portion of it sticks in the minds of the public.

I can't give you numbers for how large a portion of the public is affected, though again I worry that it's much larger than anyone has reckoned. And the practical result is that that portion of the public remains, at least for the time being, outside the reach of reason, not to mention facts. (Remember facts?) At the same time, while the Movement Goopers may finally be paying some price for their nihilistic-obstructionist tactics, it's still nowhere near enough, to the point where I might say they're still getting away almost scot-free.

Didn't somebody say that nobody ever lost by underestimating the intelligence of the American public? I just worry.

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McCain's Daughter Warns Of Imminent GOP Civil War-- And Tattoos And Hybrids For Conservatives

It wouldn't be as bloody as Texas Governor Rick Perry's lead balloon of seceding from the Union and sparking another real Civil War, but Meghan McCain warned at the Log Cabin convention yesterday that her party is on the brink of their own civil war. (Interestingly, the gay Republicans have just broken into two warring factions, an extreme right version having formed their own "less gay-oriented," more selfishness-oriented entity called GOProud opposing the Log Cabin Repugs which McCain and GOP consultant Steve Schmidt addressed this weekend.)

This morning we talked about the ferocious and potentially deadly Republican civil war over immigration reform and yesterday we watched as far right extremist Gresham Barrett (R-SC) was mercilessly booed and heckled by further right and even more extremist GOP teabaggers on Friday.

The California Republican Party has erupted into a full blown civil war between mainstream conservatives and ideological extremists from beyond the fringe. They are trying to recall several of their own elected officials and one far right congressman, Devin Nunes, demanded that the state's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, resign. Up in Alaska the Republican Senate president and House speaker joined with a bipartisan majority of state legislators to reject Governor Sarah Palin's choice of bizarre and extremist loon Anthony Ross as Alaska Attorney General. There's barely a state in the Union without a fratricidal bloodletting in GOP-land. It's wrecking the party in Pennsylvania, New York, Kansas, Minnesota, Florida, Colorado and even Utah (despite Rich Frank's claim today that the Mormons have grown all warm and fuzzy and mainstreamish)! Today's GOP stands for nothing but obstructionism... to everything. There's nothing left for them to talk about but secession and cow farts.

Their own base is deserting them in a fit of unfocused rage and ratings-generating ad revenues. As the torment the South Carolina teabaggers put Barrett through showed, the teabaggers are like a genie the GOP and their media allies let out of the bottle. It may be harder to get it back in again.

If Republicans are thinking these are the guys who are going to be manning their phone banks in 2010, the ones who are going to be knocking on doors, or coughing up checks for the RNC-- they better think again. These folks are gone. They've left the reservation-- a lot of them left it back in 1992-- and they're not going to come back.  

This was a Ron Paul crowd. This was a Constitution Party crowd. This was a third party all the way crowd. Campaign for Liberty wasn't just helping out with the show-- this was their show, and any GOP candidate who thought guys waving "Pelosi Sux" signs were an automatic win, missed the zeitgeist of this group by a Bob Barr Country mile.

So back to Meghan for a moment, who probably does not speak for her father, the senator-- at least not entirely. She's still using far right icons Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham as foils in her huge and successful publicity barrage. And the 24-year old blogger and soon-to-be author told the Log Cabin convention that in a battle between the reactionary forces of the past (the Coulter/Ingraham wing) and the more progressive forces of the future, there's "a war brewing in the Republican Party."

Most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future... I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes…I think we're seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party. But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past… I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people's lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots and lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican.

Meghan complains Karl Rove is stalking her-- on Twitter; he's just a tweet-talkin' guy.

When Republican Extremists Get Called On Their Bull They Resort To Name Calling-- Ingraham Calls McCain Fat And Burr Goes All Racist On The President

Burr claps for his kind of leader

If you missed The View today you're probably not aware of how Ann Coulter-wanna be Laura Ingraham has been attacking Meghan McCain for daring to discuss the Republican Party's drift into the kind of extremism that has turned off the vast majority of the American people-- including a majority of Republicans. Think Progress is keeping all non-View folks up to date on the spat but the short version is that Ingraham attacked McCain as "plus-sized" and McCain, as well as other conservative women, were offended that Ingraham decided to resort to childish name-calling instead of debating on the merits of the argument. McCain:

"What do young women think when I speak my mind about politics and I want to have a political discussion about the ideological future of the Republican party, and the answer is, “She’s fat, she shouldn’t have an opinion. What kind of message are we sending young women? … It infuriates me. I’m a political writer on a blog, and all of a sudden I’m too fat to write?"

Ingraham has a different perspective on what's happening. If you want to watch it, here's a YouTube:



Meanwhile, down in North Carolina, embattled incumbent obstructionist, Richard Burr-- who has opposed every single thing President Obama has tried to accomplish since taking office-- thinks his state is still in Jesse Helms mode. Apparently he hasn't figured out that Helms style virulent racism is out in the Tar Heel State. Since Burr was first elected in 2004, beating Erskine Bowles 52-47%, a lot has changed in North Carolina. On the same day that Burr was elected to the Senate with 1,791,450 votes, Democrat Mike Easley was re-elected governor with 1,939,154 votes (56%). Four month ago North Carolina went to the polls again and the changes became very manifest-- for everyone but Richard Burr. Governor Easley was didn't run again, was replaced by Democrat Bev Perdue-- with 400,000 more votes than Burr ever got in an election. Worse yet, Burr's senior colleague, Liddy Dole, was defeated by Kay Hagan 2,225,961 (53%)- 1,867,269 (44%). In the previously red 8th CD, progressive Democratic school teacher Larry Kissell beat entrenched conservative incumbent Robin Hayes by a startling 10% and the only other incumbents of either party to garner under 60% were the state's two most extreme right-wingers, Patrick McHenry and Virginia Foxx (who was elected to replace Burr when he ran for the Senate). Another of Burr's closest allies, Rep. Charles Taylor, had been defeated for re-election in 2006. The North Carolina congressional delegation, which favored Republicans 7-6 when Burr was elected, now the delegation favors Democrats 8-5. And the capper, something even Burr shouldn't have missed, was when North Carolina awarded Barack Obama its 15 electoral votes after he beat McCain 2,123,390- 2,109,698.

So it was shocking toward when Burr went on a rampage of coded racism against the president today.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr wouldn't mind watching basketball with Barack Obama. The Winston-Salem Republican was recently on the Charlotte sports talk show Primetime with the Packman. Repeating a question from the Democratic primary last year, host Mark Packer asked whether Burr would rather have dinner with Hillary Clinton or Obama.

"Hillary Clinton in a heartbeat," Burr said. "I've had an opportunity in the last week to have dinner with Barack Obama. I passed on that one."

Obama held a bipartisan "timeout dinner" at the White House with about 180 guests from Congress and his Cabinet, as well as staffers and spouses. Burr said the president is a "straight-up guy," a "tremendous athlete" and "a very disciplined individual," but he disagrees with him on the issues.

Yesterday Pew released polling data that shows that even Republican voters oppose the GOP strategy of Obstructionism. North Carolina voters elected a majority of Democrats to the House, a Democratic senator and a Democratic governor because they want a new approach the problems that have been acerbated while Bush-- and Burr-- were running the show. Something tells me that Burr's non-stop obstructionism is going to end his political career in 2010-- especially now that the North Carolina Democratic Party isn't going to throw the chance to win away by nominating Heath Shuler, a Republican-in-Democratic clothing.